Ahmadinejad's aggressive speech at an annual army parade was, however, marred by Iranian state media reports that a military aircraft taking part in the extravaganza had crashed.

Iranian news agency Fars said that seven people had died in a plane crash near the site of the parade but contrary to the state media reports quoted an air force statement as saying the plane was a training aircraft and was not part of the event.

"No power will ever dare to think of launching aggression against Iran. Today, Iran is experienced and powerful," Ahmadinejad said in an address to the nation on the anniversary of the eruption of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980.

"Our armed forces are ready to confront the forces of darkness. If anybody wants to shoot a bullet at us from anywhere, we will cut off his hands," the hardliner said.

"The world must know that the Iranian people will strongly defend their rights and their land," added Ahmadinejad, who according to state television left Iran soon after his address, bound for New York where he is to attend the UN General Assembly meeting.

Iran's arch-foe Israel has refused to rule out a military option should Tehran fail to curb its controversial nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover for making atomic weapons.

The Jewish state is trying to convince delegates to the UN General Assembly to stay away from the chamber when Ahmadinejad addresses the gathering, a senior Israeli diplomat said on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad, who has earned international notoriety th his anti-Israeli tirades, again called the Holocaust a "myth" on Friday as Iran staged an annual pro-Palestinian march.

In his address on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad demanded that US-led foreign forces leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We advise you to go back to your own land. Our region will never accept a lengthy presence of foreigners," the re-elected president, dressed in his trademark light-colour jacket and wearing sunglasses, said at the ceremony attended by top military and administrative officials.

"As you saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are against the presence of foreigners. It is impossible (for foreign troops) to have a stable base in the region."

During the parade, Iranian military pick-up trucks were seen sporting large banners proclaiming, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

Iran also showed off its range of missiles, including the latest Sejil version, and displayed its fighter plane, Saegheh, which it claims to have built domestically.

Tuesday's event marked the invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces which provoked a war lasting almost a decade.

Ahmadinejad said the Iran-Iraq war, which killed about a million people on both sides, and which Iran describes as the "Sacred Defence", was a "humiliation to Satanic forces." Iranian officials refer to the United States as the Great Satan.

"Chemical weapons were used against our nation and the Satanic powers equipped Saddam (Hussein) against our nation. Saddam was backed by certain arrogant powers," the president said, reminiscing about the brutal conflict.

"We ask the arrogant powers to revise their polices... they sell weapons and then talk of peace."

State television said a military plane taking part in the extravaganza crashed near Tehran while the official IRNA news agency said a plane "which was conducting manoeuvres during the parade crashed in the village of Vali Abad" near Tehran.

Fars quoted Iran Red Crescent relief chief Ahmad Esfandiari as saying that relief workers had found the bodies of seven passengers from a plane which crashed in an area called Qarchak, south of Tehran, near where the army parade was taking place.

It quoted the air force statement as saying that the plane was a training aircraft and not part of the event.

earlier related report
Iran hails nuclear advance ahead of talks with big powers
Iran on Tuesday hailed a major boost to its capacity to produce nuclear fuel as it prepared to join talks with the major powers next week that the West hopes will lead to a suspension of the sensitive process.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that improved centrifuges were now being tested that would enable uranium to be enriched more rapidly.

But, despite renewed demands from the six world powers, he again insisted that Iran would not allow Western governments to make a suspension of its uranium enrichment activity a precondition in the October 1 talks.

"Our scientists have built a new generation of centrifuges, and cascades with 10 centrifuges each are now being tested," Salehi told his first news conference since taking up the post of nuclear chief.

He said the new-generation centrifuges could enrich uranium with "more than five times the output capacity" of the earlier standard centrifuges and Iran "plans to raise this capacity to 10 times," the Fars news agency reported.

Uranium enrichment is the process that lies at the centre of Western concerns about Iran's nuclear programme. It produces the fuel for nuclear power stations or, in highly extended form, the fissile core for an atomic bomb.

Iran has been hit with three sets of UN sanctions over its failure to heed repeated Security Council ultimatums to suspend the activity.

But Salehi insisted that, while Iran remains committed to accepting UN supervision of its nuclear programme, it is entering next week's talks in Geneva with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States without accepting any precondition to discuss the Security Council ultimatums.

"Peaceful Iranian nuclear activity will never stop and Iran will continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," he said.

"If negotiations start with preconditions, then the results will be clear in advance and this makes it illogical," he added.

His comments flew in the face of the position repeatedly taken by the six powers. Their pointman, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, again made plain on Tuesday that their expectation was the suspension of Iranian uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of the threat of further sanctions.

"It's freeze for freeze," Solana said in New York where he was preparing to huddle with representatives of the six powers on Wednesday.

Asked about apparent differences between Western governments on the one hand and China and Russia on the other on the effectiveness of the threat of further sanctions, Solana said he expected the six powers to draw up "a consensual statement."

Salehi dismissed any threat of military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, should the renewed talks prove fruitless. Both Israel and the United States have refused to rule out any option to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability.

"Our nuclear activities will not stop despite any attack," the ISNA news agency quoted Salehi as saying. "We have told the IAEA that we have undertaken pre-emptive actions by installing anti-aircraft defences."

Washington has been ramping up the pressure ahead of the talks, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week insisting that Iran must answer "head on" Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is cover for a weapons drive.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said he hoped the talks would enable the forging of "confidence all-round".

"We have to build confidence all-round in order to examine the main questions and start negotiations," Mottaki told a group of Iranian reporters in New York on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"We have to agree an agenda during these talks and in our package of proposals we have raised different issues... we have addressed the (global) nuclear issue, non-proliferation of arms and urged that all nuclear activities in the world must be supervised by the IAEA," Mottaki said.

Iran has long contrasted its own cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog with the non-cooperation of its arch-foe Israel, widely considered to have the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal.

Iran presented a new package of proposals to the six powers earlier this month that is to form the basis of next week's talks. Washington expressed dissatisfaction with the proposals but Moscow said they offered something to talk about.

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